Franciscan Life
Franciscan life is a love story — with God, with the poor, with the earth, with the stranger. Rooted in the spirit of Francis and Clare of Assisi, these posts explore what it means to embrace simplicity, kinship, and courageous countercultural choices in a world that constantly pushes the other direction. From returning land to Indigenous communities to the spirituality of dumpster diving to what the feast of St. Francis has to teach us today, this is a space for anyone drawn to the Franciscan way — whether you’ve taken vows or are just beginning to feel its pull.
Street violence and holy darkness
This past Monday one of my former students was shot and killed on the streets of Chicago. Advent is a time of darkness. Sometimes it is…
Craving a countercultural Christmas
My Christmas Every Day experiment is starting to get awkward. Advent hasn’t even started yet, but Christmas’ crazed and over-weight relative Consumerism is already in town, on…
Jesus and the Mommy Wars
I am a conscientious objector to the Mommy Wars. If you’ve never heard of the Mommy Wars, then you (mercifully) missed last year’s media frenzy…
Power, politics and Pope Francis
It’s St. Francis day and we have a Pope Francis! Thanks be to God, Pope Francis is really using his time in leadership to make big…
Being a beautiful mess
By Guest Blogger: Sarah Hennessey FSPA Usually when people find out I’m a Catholic sister there follows some basic assumptions. Some people wonder where…
The saint and the sisters of St. Rose
Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration Affiliate Emily Dawson works at St. Rose Convent in vocation ministry. She was asked to write about the correlation between…
By the book
I remember when and where I first learned the word. I was 18 and sitting on a folding chair among a crowd in an enormous gymnasium-converted…
A great big exciting God question
A vivid memory has been speaking to me all summer: a sunny spring day, as the fourth period of the school day began, a few…